The Importance of Web Teams

"Later May Be Sooner Than You Think"

Many churches fall into this trap: A church member with some (or even little) web page design experience volunteers to create a web page for the church. They are usually very excited to help out with this endeavor, and they frantically work to get the web page up and running. They manage to create a fairly decent page (hopefully) and the church “goes live” with it.

Then “later” comes (and often sooner than you think).

Someone has to update the content on the page. Who maintains the site? Many churches find that volunteers are more apt to want to create a page then to maintain it. I’m not saying this is true of all volunteers, but I’ve seen more than one church experience this first-hand. Maybe your church has. The volunteer that created your web site may have left the church, creating a web site “black hole” that no one knows how to fix. Or worse yet, they were the only one that knew the password to your web site, and now you face the undaunting task of trying to convince your site’s web host that you really are representing the church and need to know that password (companies are getting more and more picky about giving out passwords, and for good reason). So your church is left with a web site sitting out there that has information on it that is outdated (honestly, I’ve seen such orphaned church web sites that have information on them that is over 5 years old!). You may not think that is a problem, but guess what site someone may come to if they search for your church on the web?

For this very reason, a church should create a Web Team before they ever create a web site. This team can be one person, or a team of 20. Key aspects of this team are:

1. A clearly articulated job description for each member of the team. A church should provide job descriptions, even for volunteer positions within the church. This job description should include whose responsibility it is to maintain various parts of your web site. Who updates the content of each page? Who monitors the incoming email generated from the web site? Who moderates discussion boards or chat rooms? Who monitors and replies to prayer requests generated from the web site? All of these questions (and more) should be answered by a clearly articulated job description for each member of the Web Team.
2. Encouragement from the church leadership. If at all possible, include a member of the church leadership on the Web Team. After all, your church’s web site is a marketing tool for your church and a public extension of your church. The church leadership should be involved in this process if at all possible. If there is no representation from church leadership on the Web Team, then it should be clear that the Web Team has the full backing of the church leadership.
3. Not every member of the Web Team must be technically gifted. Some jobs do require technical expertise (especially if it is a one-man team). But there are many jobs that people can do who don’t know the first thing about web site design. Some examples are: writing, editing, photography, chat room hosts, discussion form moderators, email responders, and many more. If you have no one that is technically gifted in your congregation, don’t worry! Try using a template-based web hosting provider to create your site.

These are just my ideas about what a church Web Team should look like. Do you have other ideas? Do you already have a working Web Team in place and want to share what worked for you? If so, please let me know at tim.lehrian@nicumc.org.